Aabel Worksheets, Data Management
Features, and Utilities

Worksheets are Aabel's data storage mechanism, and provide numerous data management functions and utilities. They also act as dynamic data sources for data analysis and visualization. Features include:

• Data management functionality such as transposing, reordering, producing pivot tables, splitting and recoding data, merging columns, sorting with multiple keys, stacking columns, cross-interpolating, etc.
• Integrated map projection utilities for cartographic coordinate transformations
• Multidimensional data filtering tools for generating subsets of data
• Tools for quality control of numeric data such as highlighting and dealing with out-of-range data
• Tools for optional tagging of variables with their units of weights and measures
• 30 built-in date & time formats, and tools for custom-defining a format
• Displaying report summary statistics for each variable with a single click
• A notebook for storing notes regarding the background and source of data, analytical information, references, etc.
• Symbol and color palettes for defining markers that represent individual data objects, data groups, or the source worksheet
• A color palette for coloring the values of cells
• A built-in formula editor

Aabel does not impose limits on the number of rows and columns in worksheets. The limitation is related to the speed penalty imposed by the physical memory of your computer and currently available hardware technology.

Aabel's quality control tools allow:

• Viewing the univariate statistics of a variable, including circular statistics
• Checking the number of missing values of a variable (discontinuous data, etc.)
• Detecting out-of-range values (impossible values, punching errors, etc.) and highlighting them in the corresponding worksheet rows
• Dealing with out-of-range values using different options

Data stored in different worksheets or databases do not always have the same units of measurement. This may result in inconsistencies during data analysis and processing from multiple data sources. Aabel provides the optional feature of tagging the variables with their appropriate units.

• A wide range of pre-defined units of weights and measures are included.
• Once you set or change your preferred units in the global preferences, during data analysis, charting, or data processing, Aabel checks the tagged variables for unit inconsistencies and transforms the data to your preferred unit without modifying the source data.

If polygons data are imported as numeric data with no explicit sample space, cartographic coordinate transformations are required to store the data as longitude-latitude or to define them using a different projection system. Aabel provides map projection utilities built into its worksheets to allow the following transformations:

The worksheet notebook has four functions:

• It displays a list of all variables present in the worksheet
• If a worksheet has been generated from the results of data filtering, the user-defined filter criteria will be stored in the worksheet notebook
• If the worksheet has been generated from cross-tabulating and pivoting, the information regarding the original worksheet file, primary and secondary split variables, etc., will be stored in the worksheet notebook
• It provides a text area for storing notes, e.g., data source references, etc.